Not Ready For Primetime

S.N.L.: Watch Alec Baldwin’s Donald Trump Humiliate Paul Ryan

Saturday Night Live knows that everyone is tuning in tonight to see just how viciously Melissa McCarthy tears into Sean Spicer. But just like when Alec Baldwin hosted back in February, the show’s clever writers weren’t about to play their ace card at the top of the show, and risk viewers tuning out. Instead, we got a fairly standard cold open with Baldwin’s Donald Trump and Michael Che playing NBC’s Lester Holt. Only this time, the joke was largely on Paul Ryan.

Cast member Mikey Day (who also occasionally appears as Steve Bannon) played a subservient version of the Speaker of the House, who made sure Trump got not one, but two scoops of ice cream and meekly serves at the pleasure of the president.

The sketch also took a tour of some of Trump’s greatest hits this week, including his bizarre “priming the pump” claim, his Oval Office meeting with the Russians, and, of course, his strange admission to Holt that the Russian investigation did play a part in the abrupt firing of F.B.I. director James Comey. This delicious sundae of Trumpian antics was served with a sprinkle of Anderson Cooper eyerolls on top.